Since You Happened by Holly Hall
Chapter 22
In an effort to keep my mind from idling, I set a date with the girls soon after my meeting with Emily so we can exchange our Christmas gifts. It’s another part of our efforts to stay up-to-date with each other during the busy holiday season. We pick a reasonably-priced item, and we all give each other variations of that item. One time we chose coffee mugs, and Arielle gave me one with something unspeakably vulgar scrawled across its surface in delicate font. Something about penises. One year we all broke down and decided to just buy each other what we all really wanted: top-shelf liquor. This year, it’s fancy pajama sets.
Because I can’t bear to grieve any longer, and I don’t want the news of mine and Landon’s demise to rule the conversation all night, I suggest we go to open mic night at one of the local pubs. It’s a cozy place, but, more importantly, their bartenders are all generous with their liquor if you make an effort to chat them up a bit. Plus, the majority of singers the pub attracts aren’t all that talented, so the atmosphere will further distract from the failure of my love life.
When I arrive at the pub, bundled in my cream-colored pea coat and wrapped up to my face in a scarf, I find that it’s disappointingly barren in comparison to how it usually is. Arielle is bobbing in time with the singer on stage, who’s currently belting out something that sounds like Aerosmith, and she waves me over as soon as I step in the door, bringing a whoosh of cold winter air with me. There’s already a line of shots on the table, which I determine are whiskey by the fumes permeating from them.
“Is that the glow of love I see?” Arielle asks almost immediately, and I freeze in my steps, keeping my expression blank.
“Probably just the cold,” I answer, setting her gift bag on the table and knocking back one of the shots. The cinnamon-flavored whiskey leaves a pleasantly warm trail down my throat.
“Well, those were for us to take together, but . . .” she trails off, lifting her glass and taking hers, too. “I guess we can always get more when Haley gets here.”
I take off my coat and perch atop one of the barstools, catching Arielle up on all the news concerning the Gala. Landon is a presence that’s settled like a thick layer of dust on my thoughts. Throughout my conversations, I’m overly careful not to mention him, or anything that could pertain to him, for fear of stirring up that cloud that will take days to settle again. Thankfully, Arielle is too occupied by the current topic to notice.
When Haley arrives, I’m almost bursting at the seams with the news I’m holding back, but she’s wearing a smile that stretches from ear to ear, showing that she is, too, though I’m sure it’s not for the same reason. She sets down the bag she’s brought and pulls up a stool.
“I just thought it necessary to inform you both that, just before I came here, Daniel and I decided to make it official!” Haley’s mouth drops open dramatically as she watches for both of our reactions.
Arielle leans over and grabs the third shot—the one meant for Haley—and tips it back. “Fantastic. I’ll just start collecting cats, now. Maybe take up knitting,” she says, deadpan.
“Actually,” I clear my throat, “they do Bingo at the Baptist church on Tuesdays. Maybe I’ll join you.” Both of them turn big round eyes on me as they process what I’m saying.
“Hold up. What?” Arielle asks.
“No way,” Haley says with dread.
I let out the tense breath I feel like I’ve been holding for hours before I begin. “I told Landon about the accident,” I say quietly. The words hang in the air between all of us, suspended by tension, until Haley speaks.
“Don’t tell me he broke up with you because of that. I mean, if so, then good riddance. It’s better to know now if he’ll cut and run when things get tough.”
“Before I get into this, I didn’t mean to do this in public or to cause a scene.”
“We don’t care about all that. Are you okay?” Arielle asks, covering my hand with her own.
I take a big breath and envision it cleansing my mind and body, like the yoga instructor taught us back when Haley and I took it as our kinesiology credit in college. There’s a reason I almost failed that class. Tears burn the backs of my eyes, but I bite the inside of my cheek and fight them off. I’m done with crying about this. I’ve spent plenty of time crying the past four years, and I’ve come to realize that it accomplishes nothing and just makes you feel worse most of the time.
“No. But I think Landon is probably worse.” They wait patiently, if not a little confusedly, for me to go on. “That night at the bar, when we all went out and Landon confronted Zach, I had never seen him so angry, and I demanded an explanation from him when we got home. He lost his temper because he . . .” My voice cracks, and I blink down at my lap for a few seconds before I can continue. “His fiancé was the girl that was killed in that same accident, four years ago.”
They both stare back at me in shock, unable to formulate responses to what I’ve just told them. It’s an almost impossible scenario—that Landon and I both somehow ended up together, like some cruel twist of fate, four years after being connected by that disaster—and I know how difficult it is to process.
“Blake, are you sure? I mean, accidents like that aren’t super rare these days. It could’ve been someone else,” Haley says, though I detect the defeat in her tone. She knows this is no coincidence; she’s just grasping for any last hope, like I would’ve done if I thought there was any.
“I’m sure. I know his fiancé’s name. She was all over the news. And Landon knows Sam’s. It was the same accident.”
“Fuck. What are the odds?” Arielle says when she finally finds her voice.
“It doesn’t matter. They were against me.”
“But none of that was your fault, Blake,” Haley urges me, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “It wasn’t. We know it, Sam knows it, and Landon should know it.”
I shake my head. It sounds simple, but it’s anything but. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. Can you imagine him having to look at me every day, knowing I was there in that other car?” A tear escapes despite my restraint, falling onto my cheek, and I hastily wipe it away.
“No, Blake,” Arielle says, shaking her head firmly. “Okay, bear with my extremely rare, cheesy side just this once, because you know it’s going to be a minute before you see it again.” She levels her gaze with mine. “It doesn’t matter what you were a witness to four years ago. You were a passenger. You did not have your foot on that gas pedal, nor did you have your hands on that wheel. And even if you commanded Sam to take you home that night, nobody could have forced him to if he didn’t want to.
“Here’s the thing I want you to remember, though: when you choose to love someone, you choose to look past their mistakes, whatever they may be. And even though that accident wasn’t your mistake, Landon should be willing to embrace every single part of your past, no matter how ugly or messy. If it wasn’t for that accident, you wouldn’t be this person I see before me now—the person Landon fell in love with. Now, I don’t know if you two even got to the point of saying it out loud, but we all could see it. And if he leaves you like this, reverting back to that mindset of thinking that accident was somehow your fault, he doesn’t deserve you.”
Even Haley is watching Arielle with rapt attention, taking in her words. “Alright, her pep talk trumps mine every time.”
I grab a handful of napkins from the dispenser, dabbing lightly beneath my eyes to catch any stray bits of mascara. The three of us rarely have such deep, emotionally-draining discussions like this, so this one elicits a reaction I wasn’t expecting. My streams of tears finally begin tapering off, and some part of her speech has made something clear to me. I understand Landon’s reaction that night when he found everything out, and I even understand him leaving. But I’m angry, now, that he’s had all this time to process his emotions and I still haven’t heard a word from him.
I would do anything, right at this moment, to erase the pain I’ve caused him, even if it meant multiplying mine. I was ready to forget every single abrasive thing he said and every sin of his past, no matter how dark, if it meant he would be mine. I guess I was in love. Am in love. It’s so clear now that I feel stupid not realizing it sooner.
Love. Everything somehow reverts to that damn four-letter word. I doubt very strongly that he felt the same way, because even if he was feeling a fraction of the pain I feel now, love would’ve influenced him to do whatever he could to make this right.
I look at both of them and grasp their hands in mine. “I really appreciate you guys. I just want you to know that. But it’s the last I’ll say about that topic, because from now on, there’s no looking back. Okay? I guess it took a few months of actually living in the moment to realize that I really wasn’t before.”
“You know what? I have peanut butter cookie dough at my place and an endless supply of movies, thanks to Daniel’s cinematic obsession. Do you want to take our gifts back there? We can drink all night for free and not have to dodge the bartender’s advances,” Haley suggests, her voice rising on the last part so the gawking bartender will get the hint.
“You had me at peanut butter cookie dough.” Arielle says.